Is there hope for humankind? Monsters the size of skyscrapers terrorize the mainland. Psycho-killers lurk in the shadows with glistening blades and cracked smiles. Salivating shape-shifters tap bony fingernails against first-floor windows. Reduced to the point of irrelevance, once-powerful men now cower behind reinforced doors rimmed with deadbolts.

In the nine gloomy tales of "Filthy Beast: Fiendish Lullabies," come face to face with undersexed fish-monsters, hard-drinking demons, superhuman ninjas, incompetent werewolves and other absurd antiheroes. Hope, it seems, has joined the endangered species list.

Take two parts horror, one part dark comedy and a pinch of erotica, let them fester in a stagnant puddle and serve chilled. That's the recipe for "Filthy Beast's" fiendish fables of love, death, sex and biological weaponry--humanity at its very worst.

Everybody's afraid of something snakes or spiders, God or the Devil, death or life. The list seems to unravel into infinity, spiraling into the abyss.